“Truth or Consequence” – How Did You THINK It Was Going to End Up?

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and the cold-blooded murders of six other innocent people, Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation issued a statement, “We didn’t intend for this to result in violence.”

Huh? How did you think it was going to end up?

Phillips went on to say, “No one should be killed for their political beliefs, but . . . there can be no civil discourse with people as crazy as those on the left are.”

Hmmm, that leaves us back with Sharron Angle’s “2nd Amendment Solution.”

While the primary target of this political assassination has survived thus far, the dead include Federal Judge John Roll, Rep. Giffords 30-year-old director of community outreach, Gabe Zimmerman, 9-year-old Christina Taylor-Green and three elderly citizens. One of those, Dorwin Stoddard was heroic in shielding his wife from the gunfire. Dorothy Morris and Phyllis Schneck were enjoying their retirements and grandchildren. ALL of them are casualties of our current political culture.

Radio hosts and so-called journalists long ago began crossing the line on the indices of “decency,” “decorum,” “boundaries,” “truthfulness/truthiness,” and inflammatory calls to action. An entire sector of the media has been regularly indulging in defamation, oversimplification and confrontation for sport and ratings.

In the early 1990s, I worked at WREC-AM in Memphis as a DJ and broadcast engineer. The job description had me “running the board” for G. Gordon Liddy & Dr. Laura, after the station dispensed with the “Great Music” format to make room for them. I tolerated it because of false promises that I would get my own local talk show. But it never happened and I resigned, without making a public issue about my objection to the programming. I thought it would be a bad career move to speak out about it. Maybe I should have.

The likes of Limbaugh, Liddy, & Beck have wrongfully tried to equate a thoughtful national healthcare program with the introduction of “socialism.” These people don’t understand what socialism is. They have tried to equate universal rights for quality healthcare and education, and ending the Bush Jr tax cuts as a political Apocalypse.

It’s not a damn Apocalypse – its about getting off the path of certain destruction, which nearly took down the economy during Bush Jr’s reign. Palin, Coulter & O’Reilly have tried to make people think that the election of Obama immediately brought a radical change into American politics, and that people had their country “stolen” from them. Nothing like that has come close to happening, because the Republicans in Congress have been quixotic and invective at disrupting any possible accomplishment by Obama.

Why? Not because they’re concerned about their constituents, but because of their devotion to an ideology that nearly destroyed the American economy, when it was left unchecked under Reagan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr.

Sharron Angle did her best to project a “New Age-Mother Earth” packaging for her messages of draconian destruction, in her failed battle to unseat Senator Harry Reid (D-NV). Angle, Michelle Bachmann and Palin are the women who scream for blood at combat-sport matches, but never had a clue about the pain. They are the southern belles who used to cheer on lynchings, and the Roman women who used to casually select the gladiators to die for their entertainment.

Angle gave us a “New Age-Mother Earth” figure issuing a passive-aggressive call to arms when she characterized political opponents as “domestic enemies,” and planted the seed of what happened to Rep Gifford by saying, “I hope we’re not getting to Second Amendment remedies.” Clearly, that was passive-aggressive wishful thinking.

Such is the stock of leadership the Tea Party has chosen for America , which casually encourages less intelligent people to shoot people they disagree with.

One of my favorite TV shows from the 60’s was “I Spy” with Bill Cosby and the late Robert Culp. The show featured American TV’s first racially mixed detective team; rapid-fire, witty dialogue; great chase and fight scenes, and sometimes a sobering morality tale. In one episode Culp and Cosby find themselves virtually imprisoned in a small corrupt town, which ends with one of the bad guys shooting another bad guy, who tried to help the good guys. One of the bad guys said to Culp, “We’re sorry – we didn’t know it was going to end like this.” Culp’s reply; “Well it started out with guns, how did you THINK it was going to end up?”

Republicans by nature love guns and the NRA. They love to project images of a “healthy” firearms culture. Hence, we had Palin’s “Crosshairs” web page, which “targeted” districts held by politicians too thoughtful for the Tea Party, including Gabby Giffords in Arizona’s District 8. We had Republican Chairman Michael Steele suggesting sending Nancy Pelosi to a firing squad.

There is no longer any distinction between the “mainstream” Republican Party and the “radical fringes.” The Republicans long ago kicked out it’s “liberal” element, in order to make room for the Moral Majority in their “Big Tent.” By pandering and catering to this element ever since Reagan, they have allowed these people to define and characterize their party. The blood in Tucson is a consequence of saying what is expedient for fundraising, without regard for the “truth or consequences.”

Republican apologists have been forceful in trying to say that Jared Loughner, the shooter, was not one of them, was not inspired by their rhetoric, and was just an unstable guy with no links to politics.

“I don’t think we should rush to speculate,” said Sen. Jon Kyl(R-Ariz.). “It’s probably giving him too much credit to ascribe a coherent political philosophy to him. We just have to acknowledge that there are mentally unstable people in this country. Who knows what motivates them to do what they do? Then they commit terrible crimes like this.”

Urgent Memo to Senator Kyl: The “they” you are referencing is a “we” or an “us.” Matt Bai noted in the New York Times, “But it’s hard not to think he (the shooter) was at least partly influenced by a debate that often seems to conflate philosophical disagreement with some kind of political Armageddon.”

Bai also called out Palin for her incendiary rhetoric: “Popular spokespeople like Ms. Palin routinely drop words like “tyranny” and “socialism” when describing the president and his allies, as if blind to the idea that Americans legitimately faced with either enemy would almost certainly take up arms.”

In the quaint old radio days, there existed a Federal Communications Commission that monitored broadcasts for inflammatory or dangerous sources, and issued fines for same. Sometimes they suspended or revoked a broadcasting license of a broadcaster or even a station for engaging in behavior that has become common. The deregulation fever leading to the 1996 Telecommunications Act put an end to all that.

Keith Olbermann issued an appropriate challenge to ALL American politicians. Knock if off! He challenged Palin to “repudiate her own part in amplifying the violence and violent imagery in politics.” That could be a major step in healing this sick culture.

Why Palin? She’s been the most visible and outspoken in her reckless rhetoric, blurring the lines between gun culture and the civility in politics. Implicitly, Olbermann has challenged the Republican Party to disown and repudiate the politics and tactics of Palin, Bachmann and other reckless politicians characterized by the Tea Party.

Can it happen? Does the Republican Party have a conscience? The Ripon Society thinks so – they’re the “liberal” wing of the Republican Party, which has been underground since Reagan buried them in 1980.

Their website states that they “seek to be the conscience of the Republican Party.” If the Republican Party DOES have a conscience, now is the time to put it on display, and repossess the Republican Brand from the lunatic fringe.

H. Scott Prosterman

Posted on January 12, 2011

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed here are those of the individual contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the LA Progressive, its publisher, editor or any of its other contributors.

About H. Scott Prosterman

H. Scott Prosterman is a writer, humoristm and editor living in Berkeley, California. He was born in the '50s, came of age in the '60s, thrived in the '70's, barely survived the '80's and regrouped in the '90's." He holds a B.A. w/Honors from Rhodes College; an M.A. from The University of Michigan.

Comments

A young man I know was threatened by a Tea Party demonstrator who was detained by police as a result. One of them threatened me at a different counter-demonstration I attended in favor of healthcare.

I was an insurance agent for twenty years. At the counter-demonstration I stood next to an actuary who worked in the Life and Health industry for more years that that. We agreed that the health marketplace simply can’t work in a fair way and that the economy of our country wouldn’t be harmed by universal healthcare. Every argument against it hasn’t really been supported by people that understand the economics.

I’ll take your comments as a joke. Bush’s “war crimes?” So taking out the Taliban and their barbaric society, not to mention their treatment of women was wrong? Taking out Saddam Hussein – who the Russian intelligence serevices linked to Al-Quada 12 years ago – was wrong?

But then again, you “progressives” are blissfully unaware of the enoromus damage that Obama is doing to the USA.

When the “Healthcare” bill came up, we sent letters by the thousand, they were sent to the landfill, we sent email by the tens of thousands, they were sent to the bit bucket, we phoned by the millions and the phones were unplugged, congress rammed healthcare through in spite of the wishes of the voters, and the nation got a lesson in the Progressive agenda.

Then came and election, and we fired as many of ’em as we could and took over the House, but the ones in the Senate who weren’t up for election still block the repeal.

A lot of folks are very uncomfortable with this. We’ve done all we could to defeat the progressive agenda and it still isn’t enough, it seems we will have to wait two more years to fire the rest of em.

Last weekend, the latest crazed student bought his Glock and went to shooting people, but this time, some innocuous congresswoman, who the nut felt had dissed him, got shot, and now the uproar begins. Congress wants bodyguards, congress wants bulletproof vests, congress wants the discussion toned down, congress wants to stop any possible discussion that they might be held personally responsible for their legislative agenda.

Congress won’t listen to mail, or email or phone calls, but you what? They hear the gunfire, and it scares the hell out of them.

There was s police shooting in a nearby town and attacker with a knife tried to assault an officer of the law, was shot dead in his tracks. The policeman said he didn’t want to kill the man, but the man just wouldn’t obey commands to stop what he was doing.

Welcome to disagreement with your government 101. We did all this and more in response to Bush’s war crimes. No one heard and no knew. The difference is that when we showed up at Bush’s political events, we were arrested or placed in “free speech cages.” One time on a route that Bush’s vehicle was supposed to travel, the police surrounded us protesters six cops deep. We waited 8 years and we are still waiting. The tea party has introduced bringing guns to political events. It was just a matter of time before someone used one.

If the rule of law were applied equally in this country to rich and poor alike, banking executives and politicians who lie us into war, then maybe people wouldn’t be so insane and willing to take matters into their own hands. We are a spark’s width away from something that will make the French Revolution look like a picnic in the park.

According to the press reports I’ve heard, this guy is hardly a poster boy for the Conservative movement. He listed his two favorite books as “Mein Kampf” and “The Communist Manifesto”, and was a self-described anarchist.

As far as any connection to Sarah Palin, word has it that this clown’s obsession with Rep. Giffords was going on long before Palin was on anyone’s radar.

Hmmm, Hitler was a conservative, the tea party is calling for anarchy and what source do you claim for the ridiculous notion that the clown’s obsession for a political murder was aimed at Rep. Giffords before Sara Palin’s contract was issued?

LGBT Rights

Irene Monroe: Long before June officially became Gay Pride Month, and October “Coming Out Month” for the LGBTQ community, Halloween was unofficially our yearly celebrated “holiday,” dating as far back at the 1970s when it was a massive annual street party in San Francisco’s Castro district.

The Middle East

Richard Greeman: Anti-government demonstrations spread across Morocco after social media spread the story of Mousine Fikri, a fishmonger crushed to death inside a garbage truck as he tried to block the destruction of a truckload of his fish confiscated by police.